perspective on a paper napkin

I am a liar.

I don’t make a habit of saying things that aren’t true. I assume things that haven’t yet become true, and I think that is just as much a lie as saying “no” when I mean “yes.” I am lying to myself.

When I look in the mirror, I see myself in about five years. I see the person I think I might like to be, and the person I think I am already, while the truth of the present stares back at me. 

You see, I have a rather high opinion of myself and a lofty estimation of my own spirituality. I have a make-believe future that sounds very admirable. I have a pretty little box tied up with ribbons, and inside of this box I sit perfectly still, consumed by what I think I see (which is quite a bit different from the corrugated truth). 

Tonight, as I washed the same tables over and over again, only to find a salt shaker busted in the floor and ketchup smudged on the napkin dispenser beside a slippery stray piece of ranch-soaked lettuce and a plate full of macaroni left for me to carry away... Tonight, I looked into the dirty spoon I picked up off the floor, and I saw myself upside down. 

I’m not complaining about my job. I’m not fishing for compliments. I’m telling you the truth, the gut-level honest truth:  

In approximately one year I hope to have a master’s degree added to my list of miscellaneous experiences, and my life past that point is yet to be disclosed. 

At one point I was, but I am no longer... an English major, a student at my alma mater, a worship leader, a nursery worker, home-schooled. I am not a piano student anymore. 

I have a guitar, but I am not a guitarist. I go to church, and sometimes I oversleep and don’t get to read my Bible very long. On some days, I wash my hair longer than I talk to God. I would like to tell you that I share my faith regularly, but most of the time I’m  doing my best just to be nice to people. Mind you, I make an honest effort, but effort isn’t quite the same as achievement, now is it? I am not currently a missionary, or a wife, or a teacher, nor do I know that I will ever be any of these things. I live in Tennessee, because my Father told me to move to Tennessee and go to school some more, and when that’s finished, He’ll tell me something else to do and I hope I’ll do it. There are a lot of conceivable possibilities, but that’s all in the future.

I don't want you to think I'm one of those despicable young folks who don't have any ambition. Oh no, I have ambition. I pray to God every day that I do today better than I did yesterday, and tomorrow even better and more like Him than today.  Whatever I become, if there's one thing I know about my life, it's that I want to be a part of something that lasts a lot longer than I will. I have dreams and I have desires, but for all my imagination and assumptions, I find but one constant, predictable factor: I AM.

So for now, I am Rebecca, age 23 years minus a day and a half (as if it matters), full-time graduate student and part-time cafeteria lady, object of God's mercy. I think it’s time for me to stop identifying myself as a former such-and-such or future so-and-so, and start being a full-time student and part-time cafeteria lady who knows the Self-Existent One. Why? Because that’s who I am.